Sociopaths can sometimes be decent people, especially if it’s in their self-interest.
Empaths can sometimes love their in-group and choose to hate one or another out-group, which can be much more dangerous. So for example anti-refugee politics.
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They do seem to have part of basic humanity missing.
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Fuck this shit, dehumanization gets people killed.
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And that is no exaggeration.
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Fixed that for ya.
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Fuck this shit, again.
You may not care about sociopaths, but this rhetoric encourages similar attacks on autistics. We’re said to “lack empathy” if we can’t tell what allistics are thinking, and to “lack empathy” if allistics can’t tell what we’re thinking. We’re often seen as less-than-human. Autistic children may be subjected to bleach enemas, electric shocks, and conversion “therapy” pioneered by Rekers and Loovas in order to “cure” them. Autistic adults face massive unemployment.
You may also like abstract art, representational art, and language. The first two emerge, in Africa, in the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. The last doesn’t leave physical artifacts at this early date, but may also date to the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. It’s unclear what caused it-- it doesn’t correspond with any increase in brain size, and I don’t think it corresponds with any change in brain structure, but one suggestion is that it may have emerged from variation in brain structure, i.e. neurodiversity, requiring people to communicate across neurological differences. If people have differing body language, they can’t rely on it, so that makes it more important to have symbolic language. (Of course sociopaths tend to have similar body language to corresponding empaths, so sociopathy probably isn’t involved in these developments.) Given the global distribution, there must have been schizophrenics, allistics, autistics, etc. in Africa, so it’s an open question what neurology was present among Neanderthals, among Denisovans, etc. Contra Elkblad, genetic studies rule out the idea that Neanderthals were autistic.
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Nope, I’m not doing this with you. That wall of assumptive text has nothing to do with what I actually wrote.
Good day.
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Agreed.
As a datapoint, however: I tend to think of my painfully-acquired-and-still-imperfect social abilities as my “pretending to be human” skills.
Partly that’s just snark, but there’s also a grain of truth to it. I often think of myself as not quite fully human; Homo sapiens aspie rather than Homo sapiens sapiens.
Not necessarily better or worse, but different.
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Here’s the thing;
I never said or even implied that ANYONE “isn’t human.”
In fact, when I originally commented on this thread 3 months ago, I pretty much stated the exact opposite;
Sociopaths are humans, but I feel they are badly damaged ones, psychologically speaking.
Furthermore, I think that automatically equating Asperger’s/Autism to an antisocial personality disorder is disingenuous as hell…
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They knowingly do things that hurts many for short term personal gain. I’d categorize the Trumps and their ilk as “villainous” in that light.
Sadly, the real world lacks a Spider-Man… or even a Punisher… to deal with them.
To begin with, I’m leery of condemning neurological variation.
And while most sociopaths can blend in, I’m leery that condemnation of them won’t escalate the discrimination and violence towards other more visible neurological minorities, such as epileptics, schizophrenics, and autistics.
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I agree.
And was NOT what was in my mind in the least, let me say. I was referring to people who knowingly hurt people and don’t give a shit, whatever they’re called.
Unfortunately the history of medical science is full of people who are different being treated horribly. People with depression got repeated shock treatment without anesthesia, people with schizophrenia were given lobotomies, people with epilepsy were institutionalized and not allowed to marry.* Treatment is getting better and more humane, but we’re not there yet. But one of the steps along the way is identifying what is going on.
I’ve had Crohn’s since 1964 or so, but it wasn’t till 1974 that it stopped being considered due to my own psychological problems, and the idea of an immune system defect started gaining ground. So I was left believing it was my fault. I also had a minor seizure disorder back then that was undiagnosed for ten years. So proper identification of whatever the heck it is (a disease, a disorder, or just an extreme along a normal spectrum, whatever) is key.
So please, let’s not berate the people who are on the same side. We may use the wrong language (and for that I apologize) but we are on the same side.
*Last U.S. state law to outlaw marriage by someone with epilepsy was taken off the books in about 1980 (IIRC).
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The major difference being that, all other things being equal, epileptics, schizophrenics, and autistics do not cause harm.
Sociopaths (and narcissists while we’re at it) cause harm. There are CAT scans of my skull, and the damage left there by a sociopath, to prove it. He never even had the cops called on him, by the way. Too hard to prove he did it without a recording.
To me that’s the real test: is a person causing harm.
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… Well, with my sensory issues, I’ve had a lot of close calls with safety signals.
But most people’s neurology isn’t harming me. It’s different enough that it’s hard to explain the differences. Specific policies that mandate these safety signals are harming me. So far, I haven’t been able to find studies examining the risks and benefits from these safety signals.
It doesn’t take a sociopath to decide “safety regs are safety regs.”
You know none of that had to do with what I wrote, right?
I’m talking about deliberate harm: someone sleep depriving, or hitting, or verbally abusing someone to get their own way.
That is not the same as inadvertent harm where what is beneficial to most people is not just non-useful but harmful to a subset of people.
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I didn’t mean to imply that the insinuation was yours; sorry if it seemed that way.
I was just responding in general to an irrational overreaction to something that I didn’t even say.
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You said causing harm, so I replied about causing harm.
As for deliberate harm, consider how many people vote for politicians like Erdogan or Duterte. They can’t all be sociopaths.
No. No I do not give you permission to drag me through this.
Please stop.
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Modding here - there was a flag on a post in this thread. It seems to me that the conversation has continued on since then in a productive way. Let me know if you feel otherwise and I’ll take a more active hand.
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